Patreon patron, Mr. Sullivan, recently asked the following question: “In several of your courses you have also referred to the C# in the Eroica as implying a modulation to G minor. I have never understood that statement. Would you be so kind as to enlighten me about that?” Mr. Sullivan refers to a (dissonant!) C-sharp that appears out of nowhere in measure 7 of the first movement of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3; a dissonance that is to have huge ramifications later in the movement. I have prepared a four-minute video explanation that I hope will do the trick. Watch it now on Patreon Courses on Sale
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Robert Greenberg
Historian, Composer, Pianist, Speaker, Author
Author Archive for Robert Greenberg – Page 61
Last week I wrote about the Apollo Academy, a wonderful four-day retreat at a facility called “Ratna Ling” located in the coastal mountains of Northern California’s Sonoma County. The Academy – the brainchild of a surgeon and cellist named Bill Moores – focuses on “mind/body synchronization that enhances mental and physical health. Optional sessions include immersion in the natural environment, poetry-writing, yoga, and the role of seasonal foods.” Yes, lovely and all very well-and-good, though the heart and soul of the Academy is chamber music. Open to performers and non-musician auditors alike, this year’s program was entitled “String Quartet Masterpieces of Mendelssohn, Schumann and Brahms.” These quartet masterworks were performed by the Alexander String Quartet with yours truly acting as host and lecturer. Here’s how our concert-presentations worked: Each of our three sessions was delivered in two parts: for an hour before dinner (4:30pm-5:30pm) and hour-and-a-half after dinner (6:30pm-8:00pm). On day one (September 6), we presented a program entitled “The Mendelssohn Conundrum”, during which I discussed and the ASQ performed Mendelssohn’s String Quartets in A Minor, Op. 13 (of 1827); F Minor, Op. 80 (of 1847) and excerpts from his String Quartet in E Minor, Op. 44 (of 1837). […]
Continue ReadingMy recommendation last week of John Eliot Gardiner’s complete recording of Beethoven’s symphonies elicited a series of really wonderful comments. When, in the course of responding to those comments I rather offhandedly recommended that Otto Klemperer’s recordings of Beethoven’s symphonies (made circa 1961 for EMI) be allowed to fade into obscurity (or a shredding machine), I was soundly and eloquently thrashed. Underlying the conversations around my recommendation was the issue of tempo: that is, the speed at which Beethoven’s symphonies (or any music, for that matter) should be performed. For performers, tempo is not just one issue among many; it is THE ISSUE: that performance parameter that must be determined before any other. Thus, I’m dedicating this week’s post to this issue of tempo and metronome marks, which, since 1816 (or so) have been a way for composers to indicate – exactly – how fast (or slow) a piece of music should be performed. If this conversation strikes some of you as being totally geeky, you are totally correct. Patron Frederic Patenaude writes: “I have a question about the tempo used by Gardiner in Beethoven’s 5th. Are you aware of the debate stirred up by Wim Winters, pianist, regarding the […]
Continue ReadingToday we mark a technological event that came and went with hardly a murmur. It was 87 years ago today – on September 17, 1931 – that the RCA Victor Company demonstrated the first long-playing (or “LP”) record to rotate at 33-1/3 rpm (or “rounds per minute”). The demonstration took place at the Savoy Plaza Hotel in New York City. (Because we need to know: the 33-story Savoy Plaza was located at 767 Fifth Avenue. It overlooked Central park at Fifth Avenue and East 59th Street. Built at a cost of 30 million dollars, it opened in 1927 and met the wrecking ball in 1965.) The tony location of the demonstration aside, listeners were generally unimpressed. The first 33-1/3 rpm records offered no significant sonic improvement over the 78 rpm records that were standard at the time, and despite the fact that more music could be packed onto a disc spinning at 33-1/3 rpm, the new technology eventually fizzled. It wasn’t until 1948, when Columbia/CBS introduced a vastly improved 33-1/3 rpm LP that the new technology took off. (For our information: Columbia/CBS unveiled their new record technology at New York’s Waldorf Astoria on June 18, 1948. Take THAT, Savoy Plaza!) […]
Continue ReadingI joined Charone Frankel’s “Habeas Humor” podcast to talk about music royalties and licensing from my perspective as a composer and as a content producer for The Great Courses. Listen to the standard version for free, or hear the full, “director’s cut”, podcast on her Patreon channel. My own Patreon patrons will also be able to hear the full podcast. Thank you to Ms. Frankel for having me on, and for allowing me to share! Final day on sale for many of these courses:
Continue ReadingIn the course of answering a question last week, I invoked my affection for certain period instrument recordings, particularly those of John Eliot Gardiner. I’d like to flesh that answer out and in doing so say why. The debate over “historically informed performances” (HIP) (or “authentic performances” or “period instrument performances”) is not a new one, but it’s worth revisiting, if only to allow me to add my point of view which, as you will soon enough realize, is not just the correct point but the one that matters most. (Yes, I have just spread my legs and said, “kick me”; keep reading, please.) The debate began during the second half of the twentieth century, when a movement emerged bent on performing music as it presumably had been performed at the time it was composed. To varying degrees, this meant using original instruments (or new instruments constructed on the lines of period instruments); proper numbers of instruments; using historically “correct” concert pitch (for example, A=415 for Baroque music rather than the modern A=440); and stripping away centuries of accumulated practice regarding everything from tempo and dynamics to bowings and phrasing. As recording technology didn’t exist until the very late nineteenth […]
Continue ReadingI returned on Sunday, September 9 from a four-day retreat called the “Apollo Academy for Health and Humanism.” It was held at a magnificent facility called “Ratna Ling” in the coastal mountains of northern Sonoma County, about three miles east of the Pacific Ocean. The following is going to sound like a sales pitch. IT IS NOT A SALES PITCH. It is, rather, an attempt to set the stage for what was, primarily, a musical retreat at one of the coolest places I’ve ever been privileged to visit. Ratna Ling means “land of jewels” in Tibetan, and was so-named by its founder, the Tibetan Buddhist teacher Tarthang Tulku Rinpoche because of his vision that the precious jewels of the teachings brought from Tibet would touch hearts and open minds. Visit their site at http://ratnaling.org Touch hearts and open minds his teachings have done, but the designation “precious jewel” applies equally to the facility itself. Set on 100 acres, Ratna Ling consists of the main lodge, which houses all of the retreat facilities; 14 two-bedroom “cabins” (which are, in fact, luxurious, beautifully furnished roughly 1200 square-foot homes with fully appointed kitchens, air conditioning, etc.); and a wellness center for massage […]
Continue ReadingI was just two years old – and therefore too young to notice or remember – when Elvis Presley made his first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show on September 9, 1956. More that sixty million people tuned in to watch, a number that dazzles to this day. (In fact, they saw neither Elvis nor Ed Sullivan in Sullivan’s New York Studio. Presley was filming his first movie in Hollywood, so he performed from a local CBS studio. Ed Sullivan was on medical leave, recovering from a head-on collision suffered a few weeks earlier. It was the Oscar-winning English actor and director Charles Laughton who subbed for Ed Sullivan that evening. He introduced Elvis by saying, “Away to Hollywood to meet Elvis Presley.” The scene shifted to Elvis, wearing an absurd plaid jacket that made him look like a used car salesman. After acknowledging that being on the Sullivan show was “probably the greatest honor I have ever had in my life,” he began his mini-set with a performance of “Don’t Be Cruel”.) So I missed out on Elvis’ spectacular national premiere. But I was old enough to watch and remember the next epochal event to occur on the Ed […]
Continue ReadingBackground Johann Sebastian Bach: Well Tempered Clavier What is referred to as the Well-Tempered Clavier (WTC) is actually two separate sets of compositions, arrayed as Book One and Book Two. Each “book” contains 24 sets of preludes and fugues: one prelude and fugue in each major and minor key. Book One is a mix-and-match collection that evolved from a series of preludes that Bach composed and compiled for his son Wilhem Friedmann in 1720. Over the next two years Bach extended and added to the collection, until – in 1722 – he went public with an album of 24 preludes and fugues. This first collection of 24 preludes and fugues – “Book One” – proved to be so popular that between 1738 and 1742 Bach composed a second set of 24 additional preludes and fugues, which was issued as “Book Two”. It was the WTC (Books One and Two) that kept Bach’s name alive during the decades of obscurity that followed his death in 1750. Throughout the second half of the eighteenth century and well into the nineteenth century, the WTC was considered to be the basic manual for keyboard training. Mozart was introduced to the Well-Tempered Clavier by his […]
Continue ReadingThe phrase “one of a kind” would seem fairly useless when applied to the arts in general or music specifically. Really, aren’t all great musical artists – by definition – “one of a kind?” Monteverdi, Purcell, Sebastian Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner, Stravinsky, Springsteen, Weird Al? Yes: these good folks (and many, many, MANY more) are indeed all “one of a kind.” But then But then there are those very few who are SO truly weird (sorry Maestro Yankovic; you are not really that weird), SO far out, SO iconoclastic, so radical, subversive, and idiosyncratic that they stand utterly solitary, disconnected from anything and everything but themselves; singular, detached, ALONE: truly, one of a kind. Such a person was the American experimenter, instrument builder, guru, high priest and “composer” – and that’s “composer” in scare quotes – Harry Partch, who died on September 3, 1974 – 44 years ago today – in San Diego, California, at the age of 73. Harry Partch was one of a kind. He rejected the entire Western musical tradition and created, in its place, an alternative musical universe for which he proselytized and composed. He created a tuning system that divided the octave into 43(!) different […]
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